ir strongholds and feudal
retainers and retire to private life. They obeyed. Resistance would have
been in vain. Thus fell another ancient institution, eight centuries
old. The revolution was at an end. The shogunate and the feudal system
had fallen, to rise no more. A single absolute lord ruled over Japan.

As regards the cry of "expel the barbarians," which had first given rise
to hostilities, it gradually died away as the revolution continued. The
strength of the foreign fleets, the advantages of foreign commerce, the
conception which could not be avoided that, instead of being barbarians,
these aliens held all the high prizes of civilization and had a thousand
important lessons to teach, caused a complete change of mind among the
intelligent Japanese, and they quickly began to welcome those whom they
had hitherto inveterately opposed, and to change their institutions to
accord with those of the Western world.

_HOW THE EMPIRE OF CHINA AROSE AND GREW._

From the history of Japan we now turn to that of China, a far older and
more extensive kingdom, so old, indeed, that it has now grown decrepit,
while Japan seems still in the glow of vigorous youth. But, as our tales
will show, there was a long period in the past during which China was
full of youthful energy and activity, and there may be a time in the
future when a new youth will come to that hoary kingdom, the most
venerable of any existing upon the face of the earth.

Who the Chinese originally were, whence they came, how long they have
dwelt in their present realm, are questions easier to ask than to
answer. Their history does not reach back to their origin, except in
vague and doubtful outlines. The time was when that great territory
known as China was the home of aboriginal tribes, and the first
historical sketch given us of the Chinese represents them as a little
horde of wanderers, destitute of houses, clothing, and fire, living on
the spoils of the chase, and on roots and insects in times of scarcity.

These people were not sons of the soil. They came from some far-off
region. Some think that their original home lay in the country to the
southeast of the Caspian, while later theorists seek to trace their
origin in Babylonia, as an offshoot of the Mongolian people to whom that
land owed its early language and culture. From some such place the
primitive Chinese made their way by slow stages to the east, probably
crossing the head-waters of the Oxus